Fox's 'Glee' will pay tribute to the late Cory Monteith in its Oct. 10 episode. / Jordan Strauss Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

by Andrea Mandell, USA TODAY

by Andrea Mandell, USA TODAY

TORONTO - Two movies that were to begin propelling Cory Monteith's career past the school halls of Glee premiered at the Toronto film fest this week.

Instead, they debuted as a smoke signal to what could have been for Monteith, 31, who died in July in Vancouver after overdosing on heroin and alcohol.

On Monday night, McCanick, Monteith's dark, '70s-style police drama debuted. He plays Simon Weeks, a long-haired street hustler sprung from jail whose freedom haunts the veteran cop (David Morse) who put him there. By Wednesday morning, McCanick had sold to distributor Well Go USA, with plans to be released theatrically in early 2014.

"It's not an easy film," says Morse, whose character hides a formidable secret. "And everybody stayed (at the premiere). And part of that I think was Cory."

The dark indie was a far cry from what the Glee star was used to.

"You come from a show like Glee where the budget for an episode is like 50 times the budget for our entire production," says director Josh C. Waller. "They have their dressing rooms and they're catered to and it's a hit show. And he comes out to Philadelphia and you're on the street and you're hanging out with everybody else. And he did not care."

Also debuting at the festival was Monteith's comic drama All the Wrong Reasons, an ensemble film set in a big-box department store.

Before the Sunday premiere, writer/director Gia Milani said she hadn't been able to bring herself to watch her first feature since his death. She had reached out to the actor on a whim for All the Wrong Reasons. "I saw him in an interview where he said he wanted to try something new," says Milani, who took a chance and sent him the script. "He was a superstar and I didn't think he'd do it."

But Monteith signed on immediately for the adult role, which had him playing his age for the first time. In the movie, he plays James, a department store manager trying to help his wife navigate post-traumatic stress, while simultaneously being drawn to a free-spirited cashier.

"He brought a sensitivity to the role and a really layered performance," says Milani.

Waller and Morse smile at the memory of the first day of shooting McCanick, which involved intense running scenes. Both say Monteith stayed true to his character, gulping soda and smoking cigarettes before cameras rolled.

"He started to get a little green in the face from all this running," says Waller. "At one point someone came up to me and said, 'Um, I think you need to go check on Cory.' And sure enough he was throwing up from drinking soda and smoking cigarettes. And I went, 'You gonna be all right?' "

'Do I have a choice?' asked Monteith. Waller said no. "He came back over, I yelled 'Action!' and he kept running."

"That was his introduction to it," says Morse. "He just threw up and went on with it."

Morse's voice grows a bit softer recalling quieter moments with the star. Off-camera, Monteith would occasionally pick the veteran actor's brain about action movies, a genre Monteith was interested in pursuing. And with such a tight budget for McCanick, Monteith invested in his own character's wig, and flew his acting coach out to Philadelphia to work on tougher scenes. "He took it so seriously," says Morse.

On Tuesday, Milani won an emerging filmmaker award from the festival. "I know he was looking forward to promoting the film, so I feel at this point like I'm going to represent what he would have done," she says. "So I'm going to talk about it hopefully the way that he would have."